


honey, you're familiar (like my mirror years ago)

by sodiumflare



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 08:14:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sodiumflare/pseuds/sodiumflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four months in a freighter is plenty of time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	honey, you're familiar (like my mirror years ago)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hozier's "From Eden."

Day 2

The last thing you say to your wife is that you're taking the dog out.

And then you see Liz later, and some stuff happens, and she breaks your thumb, and you hit her with a chair, and she dropped a bookcase on you - but she's not really your wife anymore and you're sure as hell not her husband. 

Also, you took her hostage that one time. That's probably grounds for annulment, as if none of the rest of this has been. 

Also, the time you got stabbed a lot. 

And she shot you in the stomach, but that's actually healing pretty well. 

\--  
Day 7

Once upon a time, in a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. 

In point of interest: you did, in fact, once assassinate someone between Social Studies and recess.

\--  
Day 12

You felt grief for her. You flew out to Nebraska when her father was ailing - you flew to _Nebraska_ for her, for God's sake. You cried at his graveside because she was crying. You had a conversation with Red Fucking Reddington, as it turned out, over coffee, and no, you're not bitter about that at all.

Not bitter about any of it.

\--  
Day 16

You read _The Silmarillion_ for her! You don't even like Tolkien.

\--  
Day 21.

You gave her the dog back, kind of, when you left. Getting the dog was her idea. You don't really like animals. To be fair, you don't really like children, but you have this Teacher of the Year plaque. You even won it fair and square.

\--  
Day 28

_Ich liebte. Sie liebte. Er liebte_.

As it turns out, the same tactics and techniques that kept you sane in a sham marriage in a sham home and a sham job all those years are the same tactics and techniques that are keeping you sane now. 

Is that irony? Or something? 

\--  
Day 30

She drew a heart in the dust. 

\--  
Day 37

It wasn't even the shoe! It was just a shoe. It was a whim. 

She didn't just fall in love with you. She fell in love with you so _quickly_. It was like watching someone fall down the stairs. She fell straight into your arms. Or web. Or something. You started clearing out a drawer for her that afternoon.

\--  
Day 42

It's getting colder now.

\--  
Day 45

You thought maybe sex would be better without the masks.

Here's a secret: it wasn't. 

\--  
Day 50

There's frost on the windows most mornings, now.

\--  
Day 67

Sometimes you wake up with the distinct sense that your sleep was drugged, and under your fingers, you can tell that your beard has been trimmed, that your hair has been washed.

How domestic. 

\--  
Day 76

You wonder if she kept the dog. Maybe she gave him to Ellen. Ellen always liked him, and he always liked her. 

Other people, with their other lives. 

\--  
Day 87

She's keeping you alive because she doesn’t know how or what to do instead. So she pretends to want information, and you give it to her, because you've spent the last three years being what she wants you to be, and why change now. 

\--  
Day 99

You keep coming back to the grief. The sun in the graveyard. Liz's arms heavy around you. Her grief around you like a cloak. It was your grief, too. You never had the baby but you had loss. You had so much loss. 

You dug a grave for Jolene, for the man with the hat. Stood in a graveyard with Liz. You're good at graves. You dig one now for Tom Keen, for the man you were when you with her. 

Tom Keen was a better man than you.

\--  
Day 106

Not that _better_ has ever had anything to do with it. 

Vengeance is an open wound, they say. It's not. Vengeance is an open grave.

\--  
Day 121

You dig a grave and put your grief in it. You dig a grave and put Tom Keene in it. 

Graves are kind of your thing now. 

And then you walk away.

You don't even feel the cold anymore.


End file.
